AFJ in the News

This argument mischaracterized the opposition to Ms. Rao, President Trump’s nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, as a complaint about a single op-ed, when, in fact, Ms. Rao wrote many such pieces about sexual assault, women’s equality, people of color and LGBTQ rights.Op-Ed by Nan Aron

While nobody was looking, the Senate confirmed another real prize as a federal judge on Thursday, the 54th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday attack on civil rights marchers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, if you want to see how badly history can rhyme sometimes. Eric Murphy is 40 years old, so he’ll likely be inflicting himself on at least the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals for three decades.

As a college student in 1994, nearly a quarter century before President Trump nominated him to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, Kenneth Lee wrote that “whenever minorities do not succeed, they cry racism.”

This week, the Senate confirmed Allison Jones Rushing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, a position with a lifetime appointment. Rushing is only 37 and the country’s youngest federal judge.

In the lead-up to his confirmation vote, Senate Democrats framed Readler’s confirmation battle as a test for Republicans over whether they supported protecting individuals with pre-existing conditions.

Tillis is continuing to do what he’s always done — present himself to the public as a modern, affable and seemingly reasonable conservative while, at the same time, doing virtually everything in his power to advance the agenda of the far right.

Rao’s process encapsulates the modern-day confirmation system where proxies jockey for their nominee with the ferocity of a campaign, Democrats and Republicans take turns jettisoning long-held Senate rules, and some question whether the system has become irretrievably broken, erasing the lines between the judicial and political branches.

President Donald Trump’s controversial nominee to replace Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia was approved along party lines by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday.